David Wheeler Gets It Right, but Not Exactly
by Adam Solomon Zemel
David Wheeler at the Center for Global Development published an econometric analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act's failure in Congress just a few months ago. The report, entitled, "Why Lieberman-Warner Failed," is an analysis of the June 6th cloture vote to end debate and the variables that could most easily predict each senator's individual yea or nay on whether to bring the bill to a vote over authorization. I read through the analysis and conclusions and overall found a mixed bag with some good conclusions about what is impeding climate legislation, but that underestimated the uphill struggle market-based carbon-regulation legislation would face.
The bulk of the paper is an analysis of the cloture vote, which failed to get its necessary 60 votes by a dozen, while 16 senators were not in senate to vote. Wheeler uses variables such as a state's proportion of power from fossil fuels, median state per capita income, senator's degree of political conservatism, senator's party affiliation, senator's gender, energy sector campaign contributions, and degree of risk from climate change-related disasters to see if any of these variables could predict with accuracy the senator's vote for or against cloture.
Many of the variables fell to the wayside, unable to predict with any degree of accuracy. However, three variables--proportion of power from fossil fuels, state per capita income, and senator's degree of political conservatism turned out to be very indicative, and by combining the three Wheeler was able to accurately foretell 78 out of 84 senators' votes--a 92.9 percent accuracy.
Wheeler also ran some experiments with the data, manipulating the three variables to see what conditions would create a senate that could provide the 60 votes to move a bill out of debate. He focused a lot on state per capita income:
"The current distribution of votes (counting predictions for 16 senators who did not vote on June 6) is 55 yes - 45 no. Raising the income floor by $5,000 shifts the vote to 57-43; another $5,000 increase is sufficient to achieve cloture (60-40); another $5,000 ensures a veto-proof majority (68-32)."
This analysis is elucidating in that it shows that, more than misinformation campaigns or the current administration's lack of will to act on climate change, the reasons Lieberman-Warner didn't pass are very much rooted in the socio-economic landscape of America today. However, if we are being clear-eyed and honest, the lessons we can glean end there. While David Wheeler's analysis sticks strictly to the actual 48-36 cloture vote, his experimenting is based on a flawed projection of what the vote would have looked like in the end.
They very same day that democrats failed to achieve cloture on L-W, ten democratic senators from "industrial" and "moderate" states wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Boxer, saying that they voted for cloture in order to toe party lines, but they would not have voted for Lieberman-Warner, or any act that addressed climate change which failed "invest aggressively" in zero and low carbon technologies or to take into account state equity issues and increased energy prices for American citizens. This means that Wheeler's projections and experiments should have been based on a vote of 45 for and 55 against, and not the other way around.
Wheeler's report is important because it identifies the real barriers to passing legislation focused on regulating carbon emissions in order to address climate change. However, greens and environmentalists are looking through rose-tinted glasses if they think the fight to pass this type of legislation is anything but steep, even steeper than it is made out to be in Wheeler's work.